The practical element in ancient exact sciences
type: Item
instance of: scholarly article
title: The practical element in ancient exact sciences
zbMATH Open document ID: 0692.01001
DOI: 10.1007/BF00869319
author: Wilbur R. Knorr
published in: Synthese
publication date: 1989-01-01T00:00:00Z
review text: At the beginning of his paper the author puts the following question: When ancient mathematical treatises lack expositions of numerical techniques, what purposes could ancient mathematical theories be expected to serve ? To answer this question the author proposes to explore a few areas - geometry (Euclid's Elements), mechanics (Archimedes' Plane Equilibria), Euclid's Optics, and spherics (Phaenomena of Euclid, Moving Sphere of Autolycus and Spherics of Theodosius) -- with the intent of discovering how the mathematical treatments imply positions on this issue. The survey will show the ways in which these ancient theoretical inquiries reflect practical activity in their fields. This will suggest that the authors may have intended their theorems not to predict, but to explain phenomena, and will lead us to consider what kind of explanations they were seeking.
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 01A20
zbMATH DE Number: 4132099
zbMATH Keywords: geometry
zbMATH Keywords: mechanics
zbMATH Keywords: Archimedes
zbMATH Keywords: Euclid
zbMATH Keywords: spherics
zbMATH Keywords: Autolycus
zbMATH Keywords: Theodosius
reviewed by: Hubert L. L. Busard
MaRDI profile type: Publication
full work available at URL: https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00869319
OpenAlex ID: W2057202323
description: scientific article; zbMATH DE number 4132099